Rev. Mathew Abraham is the Health Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI). The CBCI Office for Healthcare is a common platform to bring together Catholic health organisations such as Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI), Catholic Nurses Guild of India (CNGI), Sister Doctors’ Forum of India (SDFI), etc. Rev. Abraham is also a Catholic priest with extensive experience in working with the Catholic Health Networks all over India. As the Health Secretary of CBCI, his focus has been on collaboration, advocacy and promotion of affordable and rational care particularly for the poor in India. He is a medical doctor who has an MD in Community Medicine from Christian Medical College, Vellore.

Bilal Avan is a Faculty at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK. His research focuses mainly on evaluating and promoting health systems and community-based interventions in the developing countries to improve maternal and child health; and on the development of innovative epidemiological techniques for evaluating the quality of care and scalability of effective interventions. His book, Early Childhood Development: From Understanding to Initiatives, has been published by Oxford University Press, and his research papers appear in key scientific journals. His research encompasses India, Pakistan, Ghana, Ethiopia and the UK. In addition, he collaborates with World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop indicators for the global tracking of Early Childhood Development. A graduate in Medicine, he has a Masters

in Epidemiology, and was awarded a Fellowship in Community Medicine. His PhD from LSHTM is in Child Health and Development Epidemiology, followed by post-doctoral research at Oxford University.

Giridhara R. Babu is Associate Professor at Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi. He is a Fellow of American College of Epidemiology, International Epidemiology Association and other high-standing professional affiliations. He is also a member of the Charter Class of Certified in Public Health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners, USA. He started working with the Centre for Community Medicine at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. Subsequently, he joined the WHO and worked for more than 5 years. During this period, he successfully contributed towards supplemental and national immunisation days in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, led the efforts in stopping polio transmission in the state of Karnataka, constituted state core group on routine immunisation, and initiated advocacy for measles surveillance in Karnataka leading to the constitution of Multi-Year Plan (MYP) for measles elimination in India. Subsequently, he worked as Special Reader with Dr Jørn Olsen, Dr Roger Detels and Dr Beate Ritz at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA and as Research Associate with Dr Roger Detels. He has taught several graduate/PhD students during this period. Working as Associate Professor, he is involved in academics, research and all-embracing public health practice involving policy-makers and public health practitioners. He is a recipient

CONTRIBUTORS

of research grants from distinguished agencies including the NIH (Fogarty) and Wellcome Trust. He has over 40 scientific publications in international and Indian peer-reviewed journals. In a career spanning over 15 years in public health, he has been involved in several important initiatives aimed at promoting health of population and served as a member of technical and academic committees of various universities and state governments. He holds PhD and MPH degrees from UCLA, USA. He also holds post-graduate diploma in Medical Law and Ethics from National Law School of India University, Bangalore and MBA in Hospital Administration. He graduated in Medicine from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal.

Debasis Barik is an Associate Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, and is working in the India Human Development Survey project. He is currently involved in the research of health and healthcare system in India. His research interests include public health, demography, migration, gender, labour force, and social security. He has a significant amount of work related to the issues of demographic transition in India. His PhD is in the area of health and economic implications of population ageing in the Indian states.

Sambit Basu is Director, Research & Advocacy, at IDFC Foundation. He is a senior member of the team engaged in research on infrastructure policy and regulations. He is focused on thought leadership, policy research and advocacy in the private participation in infrastructure space, including sustainable physical and social infrastructure. He has been editing and managing IDFC Limited’s flagship annual publication, the India Infrastructure Report, a thematic report on contemporary infrastructure issues. Previously, he has worked with Rio Tinto (a global mining company) as an Analyst and Economist; PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd. and Crisil Advisory Services Ltd. as management consultant; and ICRA Ltd. as an economist. He was also associated with the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) on a key World Bank assignment. After graduating from Presidency College, Kolkata, he completed his MA, MPhil and PhD in Economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Sanghita Bhattacharyya is currently Senior Public Health Specialist with Public Health Foundation of India. She has earlier worked as a Senior Researcher with the Centre for Social Research, New Delhi, one of the

leading women’s NGOs in India working in the field of social action. She has a decade of experience in working on issues like maternal and child health, and gender-based violence. Her expertise includes conducting operation and evaluation research. At present, she is engaged in a number of research projects on maternal and child health in different states of India. She has considerable field exposure and has worked closely with civil society organisations and various state governments. She has an MPhil and PhD in Population Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Anil Cherian  is Director of the Jonglei Institute of Health Sciences in South Sudan. He was formerly the Head of the Department of Community Health of the Emmanuel Hospital Association and a Founder Member of the Christian Coalition for Health. He has over 25 years of experience of working as a doctor in the hard-to-reach areas of Uttar Pradesh. He completed his MBBS and Diploma in Child Health from the Christian Medical College, Vellore and his Masters in Public Health from the University of Philippines and PG Certificate in Health Economics from the University of York, UK.

Vikram Jit Singh Chhatwal is currently the Chairman of the Board at MediAssist India. Prior to this, he was the CEO of Reliance Health, a Reliance ADA Group Company. ‘Reliance Health’ had interests across hospitals, health insurance administration (TPA), disease management, and healthcare IT. Vikram Jit was the Project Leader and built the largest privately-funded hospital, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital. He was part of the founding team, as Chief Executive, of the largest Indian healthcare BPO and IT companies, Apollo Health Street Limited, and had a concurrent position as the CIO for the Apollo Hospitals Group. He graduated with a medical degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College. He trained at Department of Surgery at the National University of Singapore and obtained a Doctoral degree (PhD) in Medicine. He studied International Business at a premier French engineering school, Ecole Nationale des ponts et Chaussees, Paris. Further, he went on to study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Boston.

Samik Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor at the Health Policy Research Unit of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. His primary area of research is health policy in India with particular focus on health equity, financing, universal health coverage, vector-borne

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diseases and urban health. In addition, he has worked on the health systems of Nepal and Bhutan in collaboration with South-East Asian Regional Office (SEARO), WHO. His other areas of interest include governance and urban poverty. He has been previously associated with the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. He holds a PhD in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Abhijit Das  is Director of Centre for Health and Social Justice, New Delhi, a policy research and advocacy institution working on health and human rights, and men and gender equality in India. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor at the Department of Global Health, University of Washington, USA. He has worked for over 15 years as a community-based clinician and manager of community-based health and development programmes in North India. Over the last decade, he has been working on health policy, especially in the area of gender, health rights and accountability. He works in an advisory capacity with the Planning Commission and ministry of health at the central level and in different states in India. He has been involved in setting up MASVAW (Men’s Action for Stopping Violence Against Women) a network of men working on gender equality and responding to the issue of violence against women, which is now active in five states across India. He is also the Founder Member of Healthwatch Forum, a national network working on sexual, reproductive and health issues, and MenEngage a global alliance on men and gender equality. He was awarded the Fellowship in Population Innovations by MacArthur Foundation in 1995 and the Packard-Gates Fellowship by the University of Washington, USA in 2002.

Sonalde Desai holds a joint appointment as Professor of Sociology at University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. She is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social inequalities in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. She studies inequalities in education, employment and maternal and child health outcomes by locating them within the political economy of the region. While much of her research focuses on India, she has also engaged in comparative studies across Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. She has published articles in

journals including the Economic and Political Weekly, American Sociological Review, Demography, Population and Development Review, and Feminist Studies and is the author of Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition (2010). She holds a PhD from Stanford University, USA.

Ambrish Dongre  is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi. His primary research interests are health and education. Currently, he is exploring the role of private tutoring in provision of elementary education, and analysis of implementation of government programmes to improve learning outcomes in primary classes in government schools. Previously, he was with Accountability Initiative (AI), New Delhi, and led its quantitative research, including sample design and data analysis. He also played a key role in design of survey instruments. At AI, he led a study of 20 Gram Panchayats (GPs) in Birbhum, West Bengal to track the flow of funds at the GP level, titled Do GPs Get Their Money? He was instrumental in bringing out one of the flagship publications of AI, PAISA Report, for three consecutive years, 2010–12.  He continues to be associated with AI as a Senior Researcher. He obtained a PhD in Economics from University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), USA and Masters from Department of Economics, University of Mumbai.

Charu C. Garg is currently an International Consultant, Visiting Professor and Director, Population Health and Nutrition Programme at Institute for Human Development, New Delhi. She has worked as health financing expert at WHO, Geneva and the World Bank, USA for almost 10 years. Previously, for 20 years, she has worked as Associate Professor, Sriram College of Commerce, New Delhi University; Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi; and Consultant, Institute of Economic Growth (IEG), Delhi and other organisations. She has experience in generating knowledge products for strengthening health systems and providing strategic policy advice to governments globally. Her work has focused on cross-cutting themes of health financing, information, and service delivery with disease programmes (NCDs and HIV) and population groups (child, workers and economically disadvantaged). She has managed projects and multi-stakeholder alliances; built capacity; and led resource mobilisation efforts at the global level. She has organised and participated in several international conferences and has excellent publication record. She has a PhD from

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Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, and a post-doctorate from Harvard University, USA.

Sourabh Ghosh is associated with the Research & Advocacy Team at the IDFC Foundation where he is primarily engaged with the Foundation’s flagship publications—India Rural Development Report and India Infrastructure Report. Earlier, he has worked as Programme Officer with The Hunger Project, a global strategic organisation, where he was responsible for overall research and documentation as well as programme implementation in Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. He was also associated with the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) as Research Officer where he was responsible for research in the projects on chronic poverty in India, renewable energy for livelihood in Uttarakhand and Rajasthan, and particularly vulnerable tribal groups in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. He has completed his MA and MPhil in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Indrani Gupta is Professor and Head of the Health Policy Research Unit of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. She has been instrumental in setting up a centre for health economics and policy research in her institute, which remains one of the few places in India that undertakes policy-oriented research on the health sector. Her work experience has been varied, including teaching in academic institutes, and serving at the World Bank and the Government of India. Her areas of interest cover a wide range of topics, and include demand for health and healthcare, health insurance and financing, poverty and health, costing and cost-effectiveness, economics of diseases, and international agreements and their impact on public health. She has a PhD in Economics from University of Maryland, USA.

Nishant Jain is currently working as Deputy Programme Director in Indo-German Social Security Programme of  Deutsche  Gesellschaftfür Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. He is working very closely with the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India on its National Health Insurance Scheme called Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). He is also advising many state governments on design and implementation of their health insurance programmes. In addition to this, he is very active internationally and advises many countries in Asia and Africa region on their National Health Insurance Programmes. He has written

several papers on issues of Health Finance and Health Insurance and is recognised worldwide as an expert in this field. He is a Fellow (PhD) from IIM-Ahmedabad and in addition has three Masters degrees to his credit, including one in Music.

Mercy John is the Head of the Department of Nursing and Principal of the School of Nursing, at the Christian Hospital, Bissamcuttack, Odisha that offers General and Auxiliary Nursing & Midwifery courses. She is a Consultant in the Technical and Management Support Team of the Government of Odisha. She is also the Chairperson of the Mid-India Board of Education of the Nurses League of Christian Medical Association of India. She has served in the vulnerable region of south Odisha for over 20 years. She has completed her undergraduate and post-graduate studies in Nursing from Christian Medical College, Vellore.

Priya John is a Senior Programme Coordinator of the Community Health Department of the Christian Medical Association of India (CMAI). Established in 1905, CMAI is the official health arm of the National Council of Churches in India. CMAI’s mandate is to work through the Church and also with member health institutions and help them be flag-bearers of affordable, ethical, relevant and compassionate care, especially to the disadvantaged in the country. Priya completed her MBBS from Christian Medical College, Vellore, and her MD in Community Medicine from St. John’s Medical College and Hospital, Bengaluru.

Mandira Kala is Head of Research at PRS Legislative Research, New Delhi. During her initial years at PRS, she led PRS’s engagement with Members of Parliament by understanding their research needs and briefing them on upcoming legislative and policy issues. She is currently involved in building mechanisms to ensure that legislators have access to high-quality, credible, timely and non-partisan analysis of laws and policies across different sectors of the economy.

Poonam Madan is Founder & Managing Director, Inesa Advisory Services Private Limited. Inesa is focused on creating and scaling up cross-sector partnerships for economic empowerment and access to social infrastructure. Poonam has around 20 years of experience across the corporate, media, education, consulting and social sectors, with her work converging on the issues of inclusive growth, sustainable development and public

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policy. Her focus areas include agriculture and rural development, micro and small enterprise, affordable healthcare, renewable energy, and ICT for development. She has worked in several industry verticals, such as agri-business, financial and commodity markets, FMCG, telecom, energy and pharmaceuticals. She is also an Advisor for GIZ’s Responsible Enterprise Project and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Sustainability Practice. In her earlier roles, she has been a Strategy Advisor for inclusive business models in the corporate sector, and had also set up and led a corporate responsibility consulting practice at Genesis Burson-Marsteller. She has taught Economics at the Masters’ level at the University of Delhi, and was earlier Deputy Editor, Views Pages at Mint and Senior Editor in-charge of editorial pages at The Financial Express. She has been a jury member for social enterprise awards, workshop facilitator, panellist, and session chair at various national-level platforms. She holds a BA (Honours) degree in Economics and MA and MPhil in Business Economics from the University of Delhi.

M. R. Madhavan is the President of PRS Legislative Research, New Delhi.  His interests are in improving the processes of legislative bodies in three broad dimensions: strengthening the mechanisms for legislators to take decisions in a better informed manner; increasing the transparency of the system to enable citizens to know more about the work of legislators and legislatures; and working towards law-making in a more participatory manner by catalysing engagement of citizens with their elected representatives.

Santhosh Mathew Thomas is Director of the Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA). EHA was constituted in 1969 and is an association of 20 hospitals located in hard-to-reach areas of North, East and North-East India, and is known for its community health programmes and its vast work on HIV/AIDS. Santhosh is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Christian Institute of Health Sciences & Research (CIHSR), Dimapur, and is a Founding Member of the Christian Coalition for Health (CCH). He has worked in a number of rural hospitals for over 20 years.  He completed his PG in Medicine from Christian Medical College, Ludhiana.

Aashna Mehta is a Research Associate at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi, and is working in the field of pharmaceutical economics and

healthcare financing. Her research work has focused on pharmaceutical policies, medicine pricing, procurement and distribution, etc. She completed her undergraduate studies in Business Economics from the University of Delhi. She holds a Masters degree in Economics with specialisation in Development and Health Economics from Bharat Ratna Dr B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi.

Sailesh Mohan is a Senior Research Scientist and Associate Professor at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi. At PHFI, he is involved in chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) research, teaching and training. He has served as a member of the influential policy-making committees of the WHO and Government of India on NCD-prevention and control including a group that recently developed the National Action Plan for NCDs in alignment with the WHO Global Monitoring Framework for reducing NCDs. He has been a temporary advisor/technical expert to the WHO on NCDs and has authored many important WHO briefs. He has also developed and edited a World Bank Policy Note Series on the Prevention and Control of NCDs in India, which was extensively disseminated to diverse health and non-health stakeholders, influential policy-makers within and outside the Government of India to raise the importance of effectively addressing the threat posed by NCDs to India’s health and economic development. He recently also co-led the development of Healthy Workplace Criteria with Arogya World (a US-based global health non-profit organisation with presence in India) for implementing a Healthy Workplace Programme in multiple industries across India to reduce NCDs. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, and has co-authored two book chapters.

Raveesha R. Mugali works as a National Consultant for Immunisation and Health Systems with UNICEF, India. He has been involved in supporting the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, in intensifying immunisation activities in India including periodic immunisation weeks, effective vaccine management (EVM) assessments, improvement of cold chain system, in addition to implementing measles catch-up campaigns, Pentavalent vaccine introduction, MNTE validations and RI communication. He formerly worked for polio eradication and measles rubella surveillance as a Surveillance Medical Officer with NPSP-WHO for six years. He has gained first-hand experience in service delivery while working as a PHC Medical Officer with the Ministry of Health,

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Government of Karnataka, for four years. He has twelve years of experience in immunisation programme. He holds a Medical degree from Mysore Medical College and a Masters in Disease Control from Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.

Vikram Patel is a Professor of International Mental Health and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. He is the Joint Director of the School’s Centre for Global Mental Health and Honorary Director of the Public Health Foundation of India’s Centre for Mental Health. He is a Co-Founder of Sangath, a community-based NGO head-quartered in Goa. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences and serves on the WHO’s Expert Advisory Group for Mental Health. He has been a member of the Mental Health Policy Group of the Government of India. His book Where There Is No Psychiatrist (2003) has become a widely used manual for community mental health in developing countries.

D. Prabhakaran is the Executive Director, Centre for Chronic Disease Control and Professor, Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi. Trained in Cardiology and Epidemiology, he has been involved in several major international and national research studies and is a member of several international and national bodies, a reviewer for national and international research funding agencies, and a member of the Executive Council of the International Society of Hypertension. He is currently involved in many community-based prevention programmes, strategic clinical trials and observational studies, and is a Primary or Co-Investigator on nine national and international grants including the NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-Ovations strategic grant, a large Medtronic Foundation grant, grants from the India Council of Medical Research, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Health and Medical Research Council, NIH, Eli Lilly, European Commission, and Wellcome Trust, UK. Some of the recent prestigious studies he has led/is leading include CARRS Surveillance Study, CARRS Translation Trial, UMPIRE Trial, etc. At a policy level, he has assisted the Government of India in formulating the National Programme for Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases, Stroke, Diabetes and Cancer, helped the World Bank in developing the regional policy note on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) for SAARC countries, and assisted the WHO (SEARO)

in their NCD-related capacity building and capacity strengthening programme for the SEARO countries. He is co-editor of Global Heart which is the official journal of the World Heart Federation.

Jacob Puliyel is a Pediatrician trained in India and the UK. He is a member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. He is at present Head of the Department of Paediatrics, St. Stephens Hospital, Delhi. His research interests include paediatrics, health economics, and vaccine cost-benefits, and he has published extensively on these subjects. He has an MPhil in Health Systems Management.

Imrana Qadeer is a visiting professor at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi. On accepting the challenge of blending medicine with social science, she joined the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and participated in building the Centre. She has worked with the Planning Commission, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, National Commission on Population, and the monitoring committee of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) as an independent expert. She has served on the Standing Committee of the UGC for Women’s Studies Centres in Indian Universities. After retiring, she accepted the J. P. Naik Senior Fellowship of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, to continue her research on women’s health. Her areas of interest are policy, planning and organisation of health services, political economy and social determinants of health, women’s health and interdisciplinary research. She has been actively involved with community-based research and with the NGO sector. Her published work is available as books and research articles in scientific journals.

Prema Ramachandran is a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology. She is currently the Director of Nutrition Foundation of India. Earlier, she was Advisor (health, nutrition and population) in the Planning Commission and was mainly responsible for drafting the  chapters pertaining to  these three  areas  in the  Ninth and Tenth Five Year Plans. She has been a member of the ICMR and WHO Steering Committees and Task Forces on nutrition, maternal and child health, and contraception.  She was President of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India. She had worked for  25 years with ICMR and carried out research

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studies on maternal and child health, contraception and nutrition and has over 150 original research publications in these areas. In 2006,  she wrote the India country  report for the  FAO publication  The Double Burden of Malnutrition: Case Studies from Six Developing Countries. In 2008, she had undertaken a review Ongoing Nutrition Transition in India—1947 to 2007  for the  Department of Women and Child Development, which is the nodal department for nutrition in India. 

A. Venkat Raman teaches HRD and Health Policy at the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi. He was a member of the Working Group on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for the Eleventh Five Year Plan. Currently, he provides technical support on PPP in Nepal, Malawi and a few states in India. His research interest is particularly focused on exploring PPP models to improve access to equitable health services for the poor and underserved. Besides PPP, demand-side financing, service delivery innovations, and human resource in the health sector are his other areas of interest. Before entering academics, he worked with NGOs in urban slums, and with rural and tribal communities. He has more than 20 years of teaching, research, consulting and advisory experience. He has been associated with many bilateral and multilateral development partners in health programme interventions in Asia and Africa. Besides several research articles, he has authored a book Public-Private Partnership in Health Care in India: Lessons for Developing Countries with Prof. James  W. Björkman, based on extensive field research in India.

Sudha Ramani is Faculty at the Indian Institute of Public Health, Hyderabad. She teaches qualitative research methods, health systems thinking, and healthcare quality. For the past six years, she has been working on research projects concerned with human resources in the health sector; interaction of vertical programmes with the health system; diffusion of innovations; development of frameworks and case studies on cross-cutting public health issues; and other health system related operations research. She was a member of the human resources for health team at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) that assisted the High-Level Expert Group in its efforts to roadmap universal health coverage. She has a Masters degree in Health Systems research. She was awarded the Future Faculty Fellowship by the PHFI for higher studies. She won the Professor Sukatme Scholarship for academic performance in Pune University and the Katherine

Skinner Memorial Award for excellence in research at Boston University, USA.

Krishna D. Rao is Assistant Professor in the Health Systems Programme, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins University. He also holds an adjunct position of Senior Health Specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). His research interests include health systems, human resources for health, health financing, and programme evaluation. In these areas, he is interested in provider-payment  mechanisms, incentives for attracting health workers to underserved areas, effect of healthcare payments on poverty, and effect of insurance programmes on the healthcare market. His education includes a PhD in Public Health and an MSc in Economics.

Sakthivel Selvaraj is with the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi, as a Senior Health Economist. He is currently engaged in teaching and research in the area of healthcare financing and pharmaceutical economics. He was a Takemi Fellow (Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA) and a Fulbright Scholar during 2006–07. Earlier, he was engaged as a Health Economist at the National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (NCMH), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi. He has a PhD in Health Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Gautam Sen is Chairman and Co-founder of Wellspring Healthcare Ltd. and Healthspring Community Medical Centers under it—a chain of high quality Primary Care Centers, in the private sector. A noted Surgeon and Medical academician, he has held many leadership positions in various national and international medical academic bodies. As member of the first Board of Governors of Medical Council of India (2010–11), where, in a short span of one year, he introduced many reforms in medical education, as Chairman of Indian Chapter, The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, he introduced the world famous FRCS Examination to be held for the first time in India way back in 1999, and as President of Association of Trauma Care of India (ATCI), he introduced American College of Surgeon’s world famous ATLS® Course in India in 2007. He is a strong believer of making the foundation of healthcare delivery strong, as it happened in developed economies and in some countries with far better health outcomes than India.

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Rahul Shidhaye is a Clinical Psychiatrist, having a keen interest in the field of community mental health. His research work is mainly in the areas of social determinants of mental health, integration of mental health in primary care and mental health systems strengthening. He is Country Principal Investigator for various Research Programme Consortiums such as PRIME (Programme for Improving Mental Health Care), EMERALD (Emerging Mental Health Systems in Low and Middle Income Countries), and SHARE (South Asian Hub for Advocacy, Research and Education on Mental Health). He completed his undergraduate medical education from Seth G.S. Medical College and K.E.M. Hospital, Mumbai and MD (Psychiatry) from B.J. Medical College, Ahmedabad. He was selected for the prestigious Future Faculty Programme Fellowship by Public Health Foundation of India and as part of this he completed Masters in Health Science (Mental Health) from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA, with a special focus on psychiatric epidemiology.

Vivek V. Singh is a Public Health Specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and a Faculty at the foundation’s Indian Institute of Public Health in Hyderabad. He is a member of Immunisation Technical Support Unit (ITSU) for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India at PHFI. He has worked as a Surveillance Officer with WHO’s National Polio Surveillance Project (NPSP) in India. He has also worked as a Consultant with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta’s ‘STOP’ programme, and the WHO country office in Kenya providing technical support to Kenya’s polio eradication programme. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) and Chair of its Global Outreach Committee and public health surveillance track as part of the Scientific Programme Committee.

Aradhana Srivastava is a Senior Research Associate with the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi. She has earlier worked with World Food Programme, Society for Participatory Research in

Asia, and the Urban Health Resource Centre. She has garnered more than a decade of experience as a social science researcher in public health. Her specific competencies include design and execution of public health research utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods. Her research experience spans over maternal and child health, health systems and policy research, urban health, food security, governance and finance. Her current area of interest is maternal and child health with a focus on quality of care available to women visiting public health facilities for delivery, and their satisfaction with the care they receive. A social geographer by academic training, she completed her MPhil and doctoral degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Rev. Tomi Thomas is the Director General of the Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI). CHAI was founded in 1943 and is an association of over 3,400 Catholic healthcare institutions—from primary healthcare institutions to tertiary institutions. CHAI aims to work towards health promotion for resource poor people, and to improve the standard of healthcare delivery especially in remote and hard-to-reach areas of the country. Rev. Thomas is a Founder Member of the Christian Coalition for Health. He earned his PhD in Social Work from the University of Utah, USA.

Anuvinda Varkey is the Executive Director of the Christian Coalition for Health (CCH). CCH is a coalition of Christian healthcare networks of CHAI, CMAI, EHA, and CMC Vellore and Ludhiana. CCH is the policy and advocacy organisation of the Christian healthcare networks. Anuvinda is a Lawyer and has been working on justice issues for over 20 years. She was a Consultant on an Asian Development Bank Technical Assistance project with regard to access to justice and backlog and delay reduction of cases in the Delhi District Courts. She is also the former General Secretary of Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Delhi. She completed her Bachelor’s degree from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and her degree in Law from Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi.